Trump's new customs chief reportedly wants asylum officers to turn more migrants away

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli reportedly wants his department to keep asylum seekers from crossing the border.

In an email to staffers sent Tuesday and obtained by BuzzFeed News, Cuccinelli wrote about how the current immigration system is being "abused" and how asylum officers need to crack down "to help stem the crisis and better secure the homeland." The message read like a stern reminder of how immigration process works, but to some Department of Homeland Security officials, it came across as a clear "threat" and downright "insane," BuzzFeed News reports.

In the message directly addressed to "asylum officers," Cuccinelli mentioned that far more migrants are allowed past an initial credible fear screening by USCIS officers than are actually granted asylum by a judge. He then implied that USCIS officers should try to curb the number of people they let past that initial screening, saying they should only make "positive credible fear determinations in cases that have a significant possibility of success." A current DHS official told BuzzFeed News the email was "insane, while former officials said it was "clearly a threat."

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Cuccinelli, an immigration hardliner, was appointed to lead USCIS following previous director Francis Cissna's June 1 ouster. Trump reportedly thought Cissna wasn't taking a harsh enough approach on immigration matters. As Tal Kopan of the San Francisco Chronicle tweeted, the directive in Cuccinelli's email "is precisely the type of thing Francis Cissna would not have done, because he would have followed legal procedures to try to make changes to adjudications."